A/N: Hey guys. There's been a change in plans in relation to the original version of this story that you may have noticed. I've gone ahead and removed it. Moving the chapters around was causing confusion with the alerts and now that FF allows authors to export old documents I no longer needed to keep a copy of the chapters here to utilize. This means that everything you see on this story will be the rewrite. I want to thank anyone who has stuck with me throughout this whole process and welcome any new readers. I hope you all enjoy the ride as we continue on with chapter 3. This one is largely a setup chapter for what is coming in the next one.
Becket slept fitfully. Despite her attempts to relax before bed she tossed and turned throughout the night, tormented by memories. Memories of the good times with her loving parents when she was young and how that was all torn away in an instant. Of how her father had lost himself to alcohol leaving her to deal with her grief alone and then how she fought to bring him back to her. More memories followed of the day she put Johanna Beckett's case away for good and vowed to be the best detective she could to ensure no one else would have to feel her pain and how the deal she'd struck with her team allowed them the stress relief to make that happen. Then how Castle had barged into her life like a bull in a china shop, upsetting everything she had worked so hard to accomplish. How, despite her reservations, he had proven himself to be valuable in some of their cases and she had chosen to let him in on their secret. And finally, of that day in the hallway of the hospital where her ex lay recovering and how the writer she had come to trust brought all of those painful memories boiling up with four little words. "It's about your mother."
She glared blearily at her alarm as it rang, announcing that 6AM had arrived. With a growl she flung an arm out to silence the machine and scrubbed at her burning eyes with the other. As much as she wanted to close her eyes and nestle back into the comfort of her bed, she knew she needed to get up. It's not like she had really gotten much sleep anyways.
A heavy sigh announced her surrender to the inevitable and Beckett threw the blankets off of her, allowing the cool early morning air to replace the warm cocoon that had been made by the comforter. She got to her feet, her back cracking in several places as she stretched willing away the last dregs of sleep that clung to her tired frame.
She started the coffee maker and then left the kitchen to brush her teeth and take a quick shower; feeling comfort in the familiarity of her morning routine.
By 7 o'clock she was dressed and ready to leave having already finished her first two cups of coffee. It was going to be a long day and she'd need all the help she could get.
Beckett went to the precinct to begin on paperwork for the case while she waited for the boys to arrive with their suspect. She knew Castle would inevitably arrive at some point, but in the past he didn't typically show up until later in the morning.
Focused on her paperwork, she nearly jumped when a coffee cup was placed at her elbow, followed by a small bakery bag shortly after she'd arrived at the precinct.
"It's not a pony." Castle quipped, nodding his head towards the food he had offered.
Struck by the familiarity of the author arriving at the precinct with her favorite latte and some breakfast, she was caught unawares by a pang of regret. If only he hadn't gone looking into that damned file, everything could have continued like normal.
Instead, she merely nodded her thanks and pulled the blueberry muffin from the bag.
"What are you doing here so early, Castle?" she inquired, pulling a piece from the muffin and popping it into her mouth.
"I didn't want to miss anything." he answered with a shrug, standing still under her shrewd gaze.
Chewing thoughtfully, Beckett decided to accept his answer at face value. Surely he knew he'd never be welcomed back again. Maybe he really was just trying to take in every bit of their last case together. For research of course.
So drawn was her attention to the writer before her that she hadn't realized the boys had arrived, suspect in tow.
"Hey, Beckett!" Esposito called to her and she realized that she and Castle had been staring at each other for just a little too long. Instead, she turned to address her junior detective.
"He's in the box when you're continued, narrowing his eyes as he took in the writer still standing just a little too close to her.
"Thanks Espo." she replied, popping another bite of muffin into her mouth and washing it down with a mouthful of coffee before putting her breakfast to the side and following Esposito into the observation area. The author following dutifully at her heels remained thankfully silent.
Inside the interrogation room was a balding middle aged man with glasses. She watched as he peered around the room, getting up to look at something on the wall. Appearances could be deceiving, but this man didn't look like he could kill a wet napkin; let alone strangle a man to death.
"Are you sure this is the guy?" she couldn't help but question her partner. There's no way this was their man.
"Maxwell Haverstock" Esposito confirmed, seemingly offended that she had questioned his ability to pick up the right suspect.
"This guy couldn't throw a wet sponge off the roof, let alone a dead body!" Castle scoffed in disbelief echoing her own internal doubts.
Despite her skepticism, Beckett led the way into the interrogation room. Trailed once again by Castle.
It turned out that the man did have somewhat of a temper but as she had suspected he wasn't their guy. The interview wasn't for nothing though, as he revealed that it wasn't their victim who had fired him. In fact, the vic had been let go at the same time as Haverstock. A search through his financials revealed that he and his wife had been living off of credit cards while he had searched for a new job. The wife was completely unaware that her husband had been unemployed.
Beckett made a note on the murder board to look further into the wife, but her instinct said that she probably didn't do it. If she was going to murder her husband, one would think that she wouldn't have let his life insurance policy lapse just months before his death.
The ringing of her cell phone broke through her train of thought before she could get much further.
It was a uniform informing her that they had found their body. Again.
The three detectives and their former author loaded into the two police cruisers and drove through the city to where the body was located in an otherwise empty alley.
The victim had been sliced open and had his organs removed, leaving behind a scene that made even the seasoned detectives wince.
Not Castle though. He never could take anything seriously, she thought, as he quipped, "Somebody hated his guts."
A glare from Beckett silenced the writer. This time, she insisted on escorting the body back to the morgue to ensure that it actually arrived; although it appeared that whatever their thieves had wanted they'd already taken.
Beckett sent the boys back to the precinct to check their victims financials and grudgingly allowed Castle to ride with her to the morgue.
They drove in silence for several minutes, their pace that of a snail crawling in the city traffic.
"Beckett-" Castle began, turning towards her with puppy dog eyes.
"No." she cut him off.
"But I-"
"I don't want to hear it." she stopped him again.
He furrowed his brow, looking over at her, clearly put out that she wouldn't let him make whatever argument he had probably been working on all morning.
"You know what you've done and now you have to face the consequences." she said, shrugging as if it was no big deal, although they both knew better than that.
The man beside her sighed in defeat and slouched back into his seat before sitting upright once again and grabbing at his back.
"Stupid spring." he grumbled under his breath.
A couple minutes later they had made it all of a block when she saw movement out of the corner of her eye. Castle was reaching for the radio dial. Beckett removed her right hand from the wheel long enough to smack his fingers away before they could reach their target.
She was struck by the familiarity of the motion and the buzz of electricity that coursed from her fingertips up her arm. This was a well practiced, silent, argument that they'd had many times. Ever since Castle had given up on verbally begging to turn on some music at least.
She didn't miss the slight raise of his lips into the barest hint of a smile and felt her ever present anger at the man flare up. How dare he be enjoying needling her after everything that had happened.
He must have realized that he'd pushed her too far by the set of her jaw and the stiffness in her shoulders as she drove. They continued the rest of the drive in complete silence, Beckett keeping an eye out for anyone who may be paying too much attention to the morgue van in front of her, but seeing nothing suspicious.
They finally arrived at the morgue where Castle and Beckett remained to see what initial information Lanie was able to glean for them. As she took samples to send to the lab, she looked up from her work.
"Castle!" she said, exasperation clear in her tone.
"What?" he asked innocently, shifting under her glare.
"I can hear your stomach growling from here. It's distracting." Lanie answered, levelling him with another look.
"It's not my fault Beckett never stops to eat. She starves me!" he pouted, looking down at his shoes like a scolded schoolboy.
"Go get something to eat so I can get my work done in peace." the feisty medical examiner ordered and with a brief glance at Beckett the man turned to do as he was bid.
Beckett watched Lanie work for a while before her best friend broke the silence. "What's on your mind girl?"
"He's just so infuriating Lanie! He knows he isn't wanted anymore, that he doesn't belong, and yet he just keeps coming back. What am I supposed to do?" A frustrated Beckett broke, looking imploringly at her best friend.
"Oh honey, I know that he hurt you and that you feel betrayed. I have no idea how you could give up sex with the man, but we all know how important trust is to you. What to do with Castle is up to you girl. The rest of us are more than willing to take your lead on this one."
Beckett released a deep sigh and stared into her glass of red, as if the wine would hold all the answers to her questions.
"It's not that the sex wasn't amazing Lanie. You know that. I just can't believe that after everything he still deliberately went behind my back and did the one thing I asked him not to do. He's like a child that can't exercise the most basic amount of self-control, and I just don't think I can handle that."
She couldn't believe that she had actually allowed the man into her inner circle; that she had trusted him. She should have followed her gut reaction to him when they had first met. The one that told her he was a selfish, immature asshole that she couldn't stand. Instead, she'd believed herself to have been wrong and that she had misjudged the writer. After all, was it fair to hold someone you idolized up to your expectations? She was human and she had allowed that justification to cloud her judgement and she had let him in. She'd let him in and had gotten burned for it.
"How do I get rid of him Lanie?" she asked, having made her decision on what action to take about her persistent faux cop tagalong.
"I don't know that you can" her friend answered honestly and gracing her with a sympathetic smile. Beckett knew she was right somewhere in the back of her mind, but the majority of her consciousness wouldn't allow that thought to fully register. There had to be a way.
"Beckett? Kate!" Lanie called, finally breaking the detective out of her own thoughts as the brunette snapped around to lock eyes with the other woman. "Your phone is ringing." She answered the unspoken question almost apologetically.
Beckett's brain cleared and instantly she was Detective Beckett again, in charge and ready for action. A feeling which lasted for all of five seconds until she briskly answered the phone and heard an all too familiar voice on the other end.
It was Castle asking what she wanted from the diner, insisting that Lanie would skin him alive if he showed up without something for her to eat too.
Beckett had to concede that was a possibility and rattled off her regular order to the man on the other end of the phone. Most of the time he was infuriating, but then sometimes she'd catch glimpses of a much better man behind the mask. The man that she had allowed into her confidence and into her bedroom. The reason she truly felt so betrayed by what he had done.
By the time Castle returned with her lunch and she had eaten, Lanie was done with her preliminary examination and results had returned from the lab. It turned out that their victim had been a drug mule, having swallowed baggies of cocaine to sneak them into the country.
A further search of his financials revealed that he had been broke. Since having been fired, their victim had been unable to find a job despite sending out hundreds of applications and had been living on credit cards whilst hiding their financial troubles from his wife. He had just returned from a trip to Mexico instead of a business conference in New Mexico like he'd told his wife.
It was the perfect plan. An average middle aged white guy with no criminal history was the perfect person to get through customs without a second thought.
The body snatchers had been wearing gloves, so there weren't any fingerprints on the body, and the boys looked at her like she was crazy when Beckett suggested dusting the inside of the gloves that had been left at the scene. It stood to reason that if their fingers had been inside the gloves, then they may have left prints on the latex.
Another trip to the morgue resulted in a frustrated medical examiner as Castle stood over Lanie, breathing down her neck while she worked.
Luckily she was a professional and despite the distraction was able to pull a print from the gloves which resulted in a hit from the police database for a Luther Whitehead. A tough looking man with prior drug convictions that had caused him to spend five years in prison but was now out on parole.
A quick call to narcotics and they were all set for a drug bust.